


Conscience (What Friends Are For)

by Shycraft



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Interspecies Friendship, Marielda Spoilers, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, tw: harm to children, with appearances by other characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shycraft/pseuds/Shycraft
Summary: Sige is a criminal. Sige is a cop. Sige barely even knows who he is anymore, but Marielda isn't waiting around for him to figure it out.





	Conscience (What Friends Are For)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akitania (spacehairdresser)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/gifts).



> Happy Yuletuide, akitania! Thank you for giving me an excuse to listen to the Marielda soundtrack again. I replayed it so many times that I ended up buying it. Them's some good clarinets!
> 
> I wanted to give us a stepping stone between the Sige we see at the end of Marielda and the Sige we see in the holiday special. I hope you enjoy, and that you have a lovely holiday/winter season!
> 
> Expertly betaed by Shadaras! You have my deepest thanks!

**Then**

Sige wasn’t the first member of the Six to meet Aubrey. That honor had gone to Hitchcock. (Later, when they all finally knew the secret, Sige would try to get Aubrey to tell him _which_ Hitchcock. She always remained smugly silent about it.) The Six broke into the headquarters of the Hospitaliers seeking the formula for a new painkiller which was also thought to have hallucinogenic properties. Aubrey broke into the hospital in order to steal medicine for an underground clinic in Emberboro.

It was an easy job, in and out, don’t be seen, don’t get caught. Castille went ahead in her little cat body, making sure the hallways were clear, and Sige and Hitchcock split up to search different offices. Sige didn’t know who tripped the alarm, but he’d felt a little thrill when it started to sound. He cracked his knuckles as he stalked back to the others. Enough sneaking; he could use a good fight.

Instead, when he reached their meeting place, he saw Hitchcock staggering under the weight of a massive crate. “I thought we were just here for a formula,” he hissed. A single sheet of paper, or maybe a book. Not half the hospital’s inventory.

Hitchcock smiled at him from around the crate. “Sige, good. You will help us with this, won’t you?” He’d cheerfully shoved the crate into Sige’s arms and stooped to pick up another, smaller box of his own. (In retrospect, it was probably Edmund. Ethan’s smiles always had a little bit of a sharp edge, even when he was truly happy.)

“We don’t have time for this,” Sige started, and then a strange voice said, “I have an exit. It’s just this way.”

Sige’s head whipped around, his body tensing at the sound of a strange voice. The person gesturing for them to follow her didn’t look like a threat, though. She was a little cobbin, dressed in a dirty smock and apron, with a bag slung over one shoulder and a book in her hands.

“Who’s this?”

“I’m Aubrey,” she’d said over her shoulder, at the same time as Hitchcock said, “This is Aubrey.” Hitchcock started after her, bent backward under the weight of his own crate.

“Well, Aubrey is heading in the wrong direction,” Sige said. “We’ll never get these boxes over the southern wall. What’s even _in_ these boxes?”

“Medical supplies,” said the cobbin. “The southern wall’s the closest way out, and I think the guards are probably coming? So closer is better. But don’t worry, we’re not going to carry anything over the wall! I certainly couldn’t do that, could you do that? You look awfully strong. But my way will work better, I promise!”

Later, he would learn that Aubrey only chattered like this when incredibly nervous, but at the time it set him on edge. If they were trying to avoid the guards, they should be quiet. And if they weren’t trying to avoid the guards, then he should put this box down so that he could punch someone.

But just a few turns down relatively short hallways, the cobbin—Aubrey—opened a service door that led into the narrow alley between the hospital and the southern wall. There was just a tiny gap between the hospital and the southern wall, barely enough for them all to fit.

If asked, the Hospitaliers would say that the external wall surrounding their facility served a decorative purpose only. This did not stop them from covering it with all manner of experimental spells designed to keep away undesirable personalities. It wasn’t that the wall was impregnable; very few thing truly were. But it was enough of an obstacle that the Six had never considered making the effort to climb over it. It was too much of a hassle when they could just walk in the front door.

Now, they stood facing that flat expanse of wall, crammed into an alley with no room to fight and nowhere to run. Sige’s shoulders scraped the wall as he turned to glare at the cobbin. He opened his mouth to say _I told you so_ , but then she pulled something out of her bag and knelt down at the base of the wall.

“We’ve needed this medicine for weeks,” she said. She unstoppered a vial and splashed a yellow fluid onto the wall. It bubbled and hissed, a pale stain spreading rapidly toward the top. At some point, Castille’s cat form had joined them; she wove between Aubrey’s legs and then put one paw on the wall. From what Sige could see, the yellow stuff didn’t have any effect on her.

Aubrey continued, “There’s something going around. It’s not bad, is what the officials say, and they’re right, I mean, it hasn’t killed anybody. But there’s dozens of people who have lost their jobs because it’s made them too weak to go to work for too long, and _that’s_ deadly. It doesn’t matter if they get better if they don’t have a way to eat. But yeah, we’ve been working on this since we realized how bad it was going to get.”

“Working on what, exactly?” Sige asked. Nothing had happened to the wall other than the color change. “The wall’s still here.”

“The wall’s still here,” Aubrey agreed, “but the weaver wards are disabled.”

As she spoke, several pairs of long-fingered hands stretched downward, wrapping plant-like fingers all the way around the crates and beginning to pull them into the air.

“Oh, _weavers_ ,” Hitchcock said. He sounded enchanted. Sometimes Sige forgot he wasn’t from around here. “We should get some of them.”

Sige swung his arm out, trying to cuff Hitchcock over the head. The former cavalryman nimbly ducked, and Sige settled for growling at him, “You don’t ‘get’ weavers. Weavers are people.”

“Of course. I misspoke.”

Hitchcock never misspoke. Of course, he also didn’t have a problem with treating regular people as if they were tools, either—he manipulated people the same way Sige fought, like it was easy, like it was _breathing_. So that was all right, then.

By that point, the weavers had gotten the crates over the wall. Two hands reached the long way down from the top of the wall to grab onto Aubrey’s shoulders. More hands followed them. “You guys coming?” she asked.

Sige could still hear the alarm, somewhere in the distance, now joined by the sound of footsteps getting closer. No time to waste. His fists curled. He could fight his way out, let the others go over the wall and cause a little chaos to cover their escape.

“Johnny, you can handle the big guy, right?” Aubrey said, and Sige realized that Aubrey thought he was hesitating because he didn’t think the weavers could lift him. That wasn’t it; weavers were much stronger than they looked.

“Of course we can,” said a voice like wind through trees. Six weaver hands reached in his general direction, waiting for his permission to grab hold of him. Everyone always underestimated how polite weaver culture tended to be. And they loved being useful.

“Come on,” Aubrey encouraged, and Sige sighed, then nodded at them and let them pull him up.

\---

**Now**

Sige has seen a lot of dead bodies in his time — had made quite a few of them himself — but never anything quite like this. He’s taken lives in rage, in contempt, in defense, for money; but he’s never threaded flowers into his victims’ hair or left them laid out in the Hanging Gardens for all Marielda to see.

And he’s never killed a kid.

He kneels down next to the little body, unable to tell if the emotion settling into his stomach is nausea or rage. She’s so small. Probably as tall as Sige’s kneecaps, her scales soft and her fur downy. He wonders how old she was. He doesn’t know much about children.

“A groundskeeper found her about an hour ago,” says Lance Noble Chrysanthemum. She pulls a pad of paper out of her jacket, glancing at her notes. “A patrol of pala-din had passed through the area about twenty minutes earlier and the area was clear at that time, so there’s a fairly narrow window for the killer to have escaped. We haven’t identified the kobold—”

“Cobbin,” Sige corrects automatically. He’s only half listening to what she’s saying.

“…Right. Cobbin,” says Chrysanthemum. Sige doesn’t look away from the body, but he can picture the expression on her face. Like she’s sipped from a cup of tea that has steeped so long that the only taste left was bitterness. Chrysanthemum doesn’t like him, has never forgiven him for being a part of the group that killed two of her comrades. But she also knows that he’s right, in this case. She might have picked up some of the casual prejudices of her Parish, but that doesn’t mean she's proud of it. She’d been a Tea Witch for years before becoming a Lance Noble. She knows what’s right when she hears it.

She clears her throat. “We haven’t identified the victim yet, but based on the make of her clothing, we suspect she’s from Hell’s Parish. Or Emberboro. That’s why we called you. Are you aware of any missing persons cases?”

“Yeah, lots,” says Sige. He sits back on his heels, finally looking up at her. “No kids, though.”

Chrysanthemum nods, looking bleak. “Am I wrong in thinking the cobbin community will be more comfortable if you interview them than if I go myself?”

“No offense, but no one wants to see _any_ Lance Noble,” says Sige. “But yeah, they’ve seen me around. I’ll find out who she is.”

“If you give me a minute, I’ll make you a copy of my notes. There’s not much, I’m afraid. But I’ll keep working the case from this angle. We can confer about our findings later today.” At Sige’s startled look, her lips quirk down. “Just because I don’t like you doesn’t mean I want someone going around killing little girls. Chrysanthemum’s resources are at your disposal for this one.”

“…Thanks. Okay. Yeah. Whoever it is, we’ll get them.” It’s the only option. Sige nods and looks back down at the tiny body, wondering how he’s going to tell a stranger’s family that their daughter is dead. He’s had to do that a couple of times now, and it’s not getting any easier. Aubrey says that that’s a good thing, that he shouldn’t do this job if it makes him go numb to the city’s pain. He doesn’t know if she’s right, but she’s the closest thing to a conscience he’s ever had. He’s best off listening to her.

\---

**Then**

That first night ended like this:

The weavers whisked the crates away through their network, but they set down Aubrey and the Six just a short distance from the hospital. It was one thing to ask a weaver for a lift in a tight situation and quite another to expect them to cart a person halfway across the city. They were on their own from here.

Hitchcock bent down to scoop up Castille.  The porcelain cat went rigid in his hands, a sign that Castille had returned to her other body. It wasn’t far from here—they hadn’t had a good way to get her inside the hospital, but she’d wanted it kept close by in case of an emergency. Now, she needed to move.

Hitchcock put the empty cat into his pocket. Then he tipped his hat at Sige and Aubrey and disappeared down an alleyway. Sige struck out in the other direction. Aubrey followed him.

“It was a good plan,” Sige finally admitted to her. Weavers could be fantastic thieves, if they were of a mind to be, which was why people like the Hospitaliers bought expensive wards to keep them out. Being able to disable them was a game changer.

“Thanks,” said Aubrey. She offered him the book she’d been holding all this time. “This is your score, right? It’s what Hitchcock was getting when we ran into each other.”

“Thanks.” He supposed it was only fair that she’d carried the book, since they’d been carrying the medicine. “I just have to ask, how were you planning on carrying those big crates out by yourself?”

Aubrey scuffed her feet, looking embarrassed. “I was going to grab the individual vials, a few a time. Not very efficient, I know.”

The two thoughts that leapt into Sige’s mind were that Aubrey was a brilliant alchemist and also that she was going to get herself killed doing something stupid. It was uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to feeling protective of anyone. Impulsively, he said, “I’m Sige. We’re the Six.  We could use a good alchemist. You could use a good team. You want in?”

She stopped walking, staring at him in surprise, then started to beam. She stuck her hand out. “I’m in,” she said, and they shook on it.

\---

**Now**

He sits on the edge of a cracked fountain, taking deep, steadying breaths. He wants to scream, to stamp his feet into the base of the fountain, to _hit_ something. He wants slump over and put his head in his hands.

They’re watching him, though. The citizens of Emberboro. In Emberboro, people are well used to authority figures lashing out. They are used to city officials with bad news in their eyes and whose words _mean well_ but don’t mean _anything at all_. So he can’t show them any of those emotions, not the rage or the despair. If he’s going to do this job, he has to be different. He has to be better.

The dead cobbin child’s name was Kessi Churnwater. Her family are bakers. She was their only child. Her mother collapsed in grief when Sige brought them the news.

He catches a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. A child is watching him from the shadows of an alley. Two more are engaged in a fierce but quiet argument. Two humans and a cobbin. The smallest child, the one who’s staring at him so somberly, looks young enough to have been a playmate of Kessi’s. He wonders if they knew her. He wonders if they’ll run away from him if he gets up to ask them questions. And, for a fleeting, weary moment, he wonders if it’s worth it.

In the end, they don’t give him a choice in the matter. The two older children finish arguing, and then the cobbin takes the younger child by the hand and shepherds him into a building. The remaining girl walks over to Sige, her chin jutting forward determinedly. When she reaches him, she says, “Which one are you?”

“Which one what?”

“You’re a Lance Noble, right? Which one?”

Never going to get used to this. “Helianthus.”

“You here about Kessi?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you care?” She stamps her foot. “Kids die all the time and they never send a Lance Noble. We’re not Helianthus. We’re not even a proper parish.”

The city cares because rich people don’t like seeing dead bodies in with all their pretty flowers. Sige shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and clenches his fists. He knows he can’t say that out loud. Instead, he says, “Kid, I grew up here. Believe me, I know.”

“Then prove it.”

Sige forces himself to stay sitting on the fountain ledge. He’d tower over if he stood up. It wouldn’t help. “You sound like you have something in mind.” When she doesn’t answer, he says, “What’s your name?”

“None of your business.”

He lets it slide. “When was the last time you saw Kessi?”

The girl sets her shoulders, squares her chin. “When she went into the man’s house. In Chrysanthemum.”

\---

**Then**

The first time Sige saved Aubrey’s life, it was a casual thing. They’d been crouching in the the rafters of an old theater. The Six had gotten a tip that the Fontmen were planning a raid here, and they wanted to obtain the script for a certain heretical play before it could be seized and burned.

Aubrey wasn’t used navigating heights like this. It was too easy to make a misstep. One foot landed on a beam at the wrong angle, and that was all it took. She let out a startled yelp as she fell.

Sige caught her. Hadn’t even thought about it. He’d seen her slip in his peripheral vision, and had automatically reached out an arm and snatched her by her tail. He set her back down in front of him, letting her compose herself. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of the guard patrolling below them the entire time.

Aubrey shuddered. She grabbed hold of one of his thick arms to steady herself, then adjusted her apron, smoothed down her tail, and hunkered down to keep watch with him. Sige honestly hadn’t thought anything more of it.

After they’d returned to the dance school, Aubrey had pulled him aside. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Hm? Oh, right, yeah, uh. No problem.” He nudged one of Castille’s new dogs aside with his foot so that he could root through a cabinet. She didn’t need to thank him for that. Someone’s on your crew, you looked after them. That’s just the way it was.

\---

**Now**

“She went alone?”

If Sige were any other Lance Noble—even one of the good ones—he’d have seized her immediately and dragged her in for questioning. Instead, he’d said, “Tell me everything you know.” Then he’d bought sweets from a vendor’s cart, getting double what he thought she could possibly eat to make sure some of it went back to the other children. He doesn’t hurt kids. He doesn’t snitch on them, either. Not unless he has to.

Now, he and and the girl are seated back on the fountain ledge, picking through paper cones full of candied nuts with sticky fingers. Sige is very careful to keep to a public space. There’s an itch between his shoulder blades that tells him they’re being watched, and whoever it is—kids looking out for their friend, or adults worried for her safety but too scared to chase away a Lance Noble—he doesn’t blame them a single bit. Not after what the girl’s been telling him.

She’s staring morosely at her snack. “Of course not. She told us all to stay home, but we followed her anyway. You can’t trust grownups.” A nut falls from her cone, landing in the dusty street, and she picks it up and pops it into her mouth. “Kessi said that he said he was a baker. Like her family. She said he offered her a job because he ate a cake she made and it was good. She thought she could get her family out of Emberboro. I told her it didn’t sound right but she didn’t listen.

Sige remembers spending hours in the hot sun working on a magic boat that would never sail again. “You get desperate, when you think there’s a way out,” he murmurs. “Even if it doesn’t make sense.”

The girl nods, sucking sugar from her fingers. “So we followed her into Chrysanthemum, and we were going to get help if we heard fighting. It’s just, once she got there, she went inside, and…” She rubs at her eyes angrily. “She didn’t come out again. We knocked on the door and there wasn’t anyone there. We tried to get help and no one listened. They just called the pala-din on us. Roj tried to explain to the pala-din, but _they_ never listen to anybody.”

Sige tips his head back, pouring the last of his candied nuts into his mouth. Then he stands up, wiping his hands on his shirt. “Can you show me which house?”

She nods.

\---

**Then**

The first time Aubrey saved Sige’s life, it was considerably more dramatic. There was a fight, a bad one. A guard had Sige by the neck, and Sige couldn’t shake him. The man’s arm pressed tighter against his windpipe, and Sige’s vision started going black. When he felt Aubrey climbing up his body like a tree, he honestly thought he was imagining it. Then he felt her clawed hand grab his neck and so that she could throw something into the guard’s face. The guard immediately let him go, and Sige fell to his hands and knees, gasping for air.

Aubrey’d managed to cling to his arm even when he fell. She hopped down and peered worriedly into his face. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he rasped through his sore throat. He looked over at the guard, who was doubled over, clutching at his own throat. “What’d you _do_?”

“New recipe,” Aubrey said, helping him to his feet. “Choke dust. It seemed appropriate, you know?” She looked nervously back at the guard, who was still choking. “Not sure how long it’ll last. We should go.”

Sige nodded, then kicked the guard over. He stomped down on the man’s neck, making sure he couldn’t follow them, and then followed Aubrey.

Later, over what was either a very late supper or a very early breakfast, Sige said to her, “Hey, so, thanks for that. Don’t think I’d ever live it down if I got killed by only one guardsman.”

“You’re welcome, but you don’t need to say thank you. You’re my friend.” She bit into an apple cheerfully. “Gotta take care of your friends. That’s just the way it is!”

“Yeah,” Sige said, reaching for an apple of his own. He grinned. “I know.”

  
\---

**Now**

Chrysanthemum comes through.

It’s not that he hadn’t believed her. He thinks she generally means well. It’s just that he didn’t think she’d actually follow through. But after he escorts the little girl back to Emberboro and watches her friends hustle her back out of sight, he sends a message anyway, just so that Orchid couldn’t rip into him for breaking procedure. By the time he makes it back to Chrysanthemum Parish, there are three other Lance Nobles with a troop of human guards behind them. Iris gives him a laconic nod. Chrysanthemum organizes the guards with her usual efficiency. Orchid sidles up to him, leaning on her old Fontsmen cane and watching him through narrow eyes.

“Nice of you to join us, Helianthus,” she says. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Nice to see you, too, Rebecca,” Sige growls. “Are we going to stand around and gossip, or are we going to go get this asshole?”

She gives him a mocking bow and gestures for him to lead the way.

He kicks down the door himself, unleashing all his pent up rage into that single piece of wood and metal. It’s a well-made door, but it’s no match for him. Guards stream into the building behind him, clearing the rooms, while the other Lance Nobles follow with weapons drawn.

It’s a tense few minutes. Sige’s body hums with the need for action. It’s not a big house, and the reports start coming in quickly. Empty.

Iris finally calls it. He sighs and starts directing the guards to secure the crime scene. “It’s empty. He must have abandoned this place after dumping the body.”

The problem with most law-abiding citizens is that they tend to think laterally. Most people see an empty house and assume that it means no one’s home. Most people never lived in a secret base beneath a dancing school.

Sige finds the trap door easily enough. He signals to Rebecca and doesn’t waste time jumping down into darkness. He can already hear footsteps running away from him.

It’s not much of a chase. Whatever this building had been, it is not home to a criminal organization. It’s tiny, compared to home. He catches the runner quickly, grabbing onto a bony shoulder and leveraging it to throw its owner into a wall. Before the person can get up, he grabs them by the scruff of the neck and slams them against the wall.

“Mercy, mercy! I beg you, my lord, mercy! We’re on the same side!” It’s a thin voice from a scrawny, balding man in his forties, glasses knocked askew.

“We’re really, really not,” Sige growls. He presses his fist into the man’s throat. A warning. “Talk.”

“Yes, yes! I merely serve my people! I killed the wretched thing, I did, out of love for Marielda!”

Sige grinds his fist into the man’s throat. “Why’d you leave her body in Chrysanthemum? What, were the slums not good enough for you?”

“The city is under siege, my lord Lance Noble! The citizens have grown complacent, they need a call to action! A reminder of what we’re up against! I had to sully the noble flowers with its wretched body to reopen the city’s eyes! We are the divine city, Samothes’ chosen, under attack by the kobold plague—”

He’s so furious he can barely _see_ . He’s not even thinking, he _can’t_ even think, barely even knows what he’s doing as he pulls out his gun and presses the muzzle against the scrawny man’s face. And then freezes at the sound of a click by his left ear. He tilts his head, not taking his eyes off of his prey, but moving enough so that he can see over his shoulder with his peripheral vision.

Lance Noble Orchid glares at him, cane out, tip glowing red, pressed up right against his jugular.

“Rebecca. Piss off.” He can feel the heat from her cane, for now just powerful enough to be uncomfortable on his skin.

“Is this how it’s going to be, Sige? Once a killer, always a killer? I brought you into this; if you murder this man in cold blood, it’s my responsibility. I’ll do it, Sige. You know I will.” Rebecca’s cane grows even hotter. It’s starting to burn him. He wonders, if both of them pull the trigger at the same time, will her cane kill him before he can see this monster dead?

“He killed a little kid,” Sige snarls.

“Kobold _filth_ —” the murderer chokes out. Sige grinds his gun harder into the man’s cheek.

“Sige. _Think_. This isn’t you anymore.”

“Says _who_?”

“Says _me_. What’s it going to be, Sige? Are you the man who told me to my face that you’d murdered a city official, or are you the man who tried to save our Lord? Are you a criminal, or are you a Lance Noble?”

“I’m _both_.”

“You don’t _get_ to be both. We don’t live in that kind of city anymore.”

His breath is still coming in gulps. He can hear his blood pounding through his veins. The city will be better off, if he kills this creep, this monster. He closes his eyes and sees the dead girl’s face again. Then he thinks of the living girl’s face, the one who’d sat by his side eating sweets, who didn’t trust any adult in the city but was so desperate to find her friend’s killer that she’d gone to a _Lance Noble_.

A Lance Noble.

Would she have spoken to him if he’d just been some guy asking questions about her dead friend? Would she have spoken to Sige if he were still with the Six? Would any other Lance Noble have believed her? Or would Kessi’s killer have walked free just because there wasn’t anyone that people could trust to look out for them?

Criminal, or Lance Noble?

Sige sighs. Slowly, painfully, he hands his gun to Rebecca.

And then, because he might be a Lance Noble but he’s still Sige, he punches the murderer in the face.

Rebecca lowers her cane, grimacing at him. “If that makes you feel better,” she says. “Now help me carry this creep back upstairs.”

So Sige does, and then he tosses the unconscious murderer into Lance Noble Chrysanthemum’s custody, and then he sinks to the floor, wanting to puke. Lance Noble Orchid—Rebecca—puts her hand on his shoulder. “You did good,” she says. “I’m glad.”

\---

**Then**

Things were good. Surprisingly so. The Six’s lair beneath the dancing school hummed with life; the constant sense of motion, the people coming in and out of the building above them, the sound of feet moving on the floor joined with music or the clang of clashing swords; Aubrey’s scorched lab bench, Castille’s brightly colored dresses, the surprisingly fastidious way that Hitchcock kept the place tidy, and the pair of rowdy, friendly dogs constantly wanting attention. It felt almost like a home. Sige could get used to this.

He cleaned his gun, the fancy one he’d stolen off of that Lance Noble brat just a few weeks before. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Aubrey cautiously pour a liquid from one vial into another. There was a puff of smoke, but she didn’t seem alarmed. Sige put the gun back together, the motions familiar and soothing.

Light footsteps danced down the stairs from above. It was Hitchcock, his eyes glinting with the promise of mischief. They had a job scheduled in just a little under an hour. It was almost time to get moving.

“Bit of a minor problem,” Hitchcock said. “Castille can’t get her cat body back here. She scouted the site out, but there’s a troop of pala-din in one of the cars. Unactivated. We’ll just have to be a little more subtle. Are you ready?”

Sige stood up, stretching so that his spine popped. “I’m always ready,” he said. “Aubrey?”

“Coming!” she said. She grabbed a vial from the table, shoved it into one of her many pockets, and trotted after them.

They had a train to rob. It was going to be a good day.

\---

**Now**

Sige doesn’t stick around to watch the others take the man into custody. He feels exhausted, like the world has gone gray. Barely paying attention to what he’s doing, he makes his way to the train station.

Aubrey doesn’t come down into the city much anymore. He can hardly blame her; it’s not exactly a quick or easy trip. But any time Sige makes his way to the station, there is always a train ready to take him to the old palace. It’s all right, as far as concessions go. He tries to go at least once a week, though he doesn’t always manage it. It’s been almost a month since their last visit.

She’s there to greet him at the station, slipping her clawed hand into his and leading him into a room with a small table and a fire crackling in the hearth, never mind that it’s almost High Sun Day again. The table sags beneath the weight of a dozen different brunch dishes. Sige helps himself to a slice of frittata and sits in the biggest chair.

Pouring syrup onto her pancakes, Aubrey asks, “How have you been? Busy?”

Sige doesn’t answer right away. He grabs a couple pieces of fruit that he probably won’t eat and arranges them on his plate. “Honestly, I’m not doing that great,” he finally says. “I don’t think I want to talk about it.”

Aubrey nods. She never asks him about what his life as a Lance Noble is like, and he’s grateful for that. He stabs at his food with his fork. “What about you?”

“I’m okay. There’s always enough food here. I feel guilty sometimes, like I should be taking it all into the city.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. Always enough food for two cobbins isn’t the same thing as enough food to feed the city.”

“I know that. It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Awkwardly, Sige shrugs, grasping for a different subject. It never used to be hard to talk to her. He doesn’t know how to handle it. “How’s Primo?”

Her ears droop. “Old. Old and tired. Some days he won’t leave the forge, and other days he refuses to go in it at all. I’m not sure which is better.”

“That sucks,” Sige says. He’d only met Primo the one time, but he’d liked him.

“Yeah. I wish I’d known him when he was younger. He’s such a brilliant guy, Sige. He just never recovered, after…” She pokes at her pancakes. “Well. After.”

Propping his head in his hands, Sige says, “What about Himself? He treating you okay?” He asks every time he visits, and every time, he’s ready to fight a god if she ever says he’s mistreated her.

A fleeting smile crosses Aubrey’s face, and then her ears droop again. “Samot…” She sighs. “He’s doing his best. He still thinks we can beat It.”

The Heat and the Dark. Sige snorts. “Well, good for him if he does, I suppose. It doesn’t help us here.”

“He’s doing his best,” she says again, but doesn’t argue. Even a god’s best isn’t always enough.

“Never mind,” Sige says. “You have any news?”

He listens while she talks, and it's almost like old times. She tells him about her latest invention, about the news from the front, about the politics surrounding an envoy from the wharvers, about the letter she’d gotten from the Hitchcocks. That last catches his interest. Sige isn’t one for writing letters. He hasn’t heard from either brother since they’d left. Hadn’t even been sure if Edmund was still alive, actually, what with the severity of his injuries and the fact that he’d left Marielda before he finished healing. A man with a slit throat rides off into the sunset, you don’t expect to hear from him again, but apparently both brothers are living with the Old Man and have become pillars of their community. Sige never would’ve guessed.

When they finish eating, Sige reluctantly pulls himself to his feet. He’s uncomfortably aware of how much time he’s wasted. There’s a stack of reports on his desk with cases just as important, though perhaps less personal. Still, when Aubrey walks him back to the station, he doesn’t get on the train. “Aubrey, I don’t want to do this,” he says.

“I know.” Sadly, she leans against his leg. “You don’t have to. You can stay here if you want it.”

“No. I can’t.” He sighs, adjusting his stupid badge. “It just feels like everything’s fallen apart.”

“Yes,” she says. “That’s why we have to put it back together again.”

He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and steps onto the train.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't think of an organic way to stick this in the story, since it's all Sige's PoV, but in my head when Sige guessed it was Edmund, it was actually Ethan. Because I think it's funny that way. But you do you; we'll never know for sure!


End file.
